Under the Dying Sun
by nicodemusfleur
Summary: "All she knows for sure is that her name is Bella."  AU  minorly  post-BD snapshots of Bella's life.


**A/N READ (_Most_ of is actually necessary info to understand the story): **So this story was born out of my eternal frustration with the phenomenon that is 'Twilight'. I read all the books in like three days when I was sick, and then proceeded to make fun of them for the next three years. And then I got so frustrated that I wrote this. This could definitely be considered AU as in my version, when Jacob left at the end of 'Eclipse' he never came back. Important consequences of this decision are that Charlie never sees Bella again after her wedding (as Jacob was never there to fursplode in front of him), and obviously Jacob never imprinted on Renesmee.

Oh, and it starts **One Day** after Bella is changed (and so on). Don't forget to review!

_**Disclaimer: My name is not Stephanie Meyer, and I was not responsible for creating the Twilight Saga...thankfully.**_

* * *

******One Day**

This is how it was always supposed to be.

For a girl who was always so insecure and so self conscious, it makes sense for her to somehow find a way to alleviate these irrational and self deprecating thoughts. The manner in which they are erased however inconceivable.

And yet here she was.

Strong where she was weak, beautiful where she was ugly - all of the holes of her meager human existence filled in by the sickly-sweet venom now running through her veins. She was finally complete.

****

**One Month**

Her eyes were still red, though now dulled to the color of blood and dirt rather than the harsh ruby red present at her rebirth. It made little difference to her. The newness of everything around her detracted her attention away from the things she thought would matter.

Everything was more beautiful. From the world around her to the molecules in her body. Even her personality seemed more tempered and flawless.

She was starting to wonder whether or not that was a good thing.

****

**One Year**

How it's possible that she has everything and can still find a way to be unhappy, she has no idea.

Because it's true. She has everything she's ever wanted, and more.

She has Edward, her entire reason for existence - and not just for a lifetime, but forever.

She has Renesmee, her beautiful baby girl. The darling child she never thought she wanted, and never thought she'd have.

She has a real family, with Edward and Renesmee, and all of the Cullens. She has a home, a place in the world, and eternity stretched out in front of her. And yet her greatest desire is her downfall.

She didn't think it through.

When she was human, her world revolved around Edward and everything else fell by the wayside, and now that she has him everything she left behind seems to weigh so much more.

She didn't think it through.

And now she had so much time.

How vampires perceive time is a contradiction of itself. The days and nights are longer because they do not end, and her mind could now watch a tenth of a second go by as if it was a minute long. She found herself sitting in the forest for days on end as if they were years, and yet her human memories of only a year ago were fast fading into nothing. She could remember everything about her new life, but it meant nothing. This new non-person that she'd become had no connection to the girl that first arrived in Forks.

They did not look the same, they did not act the same - they were two different people.

And she felt so alone.

Everything she'd been looking forward to had yet to live up to her fairytale-like standards.

When she was human, Edward was this unattainable Adonis, forever swooping down to her measly human self. She had often felt unworthy of him, yet was selfish enough to glue herself to his side anyways. Back then, she wanted to be able to lose herself in his kiss, but was unable to due to his worry about lack of control.

But now, in this new world, there was no lack of control. All of the things about getting lost in the physicality of another person didn't exist. There was no heavy breathing, no pounding heartbeat, no aching limbs - nothing overwhelming. Now that she could get lost, there was no possibility.

She had everything she ever wanted, and now she wanted everything she'd already had.

She missed warm sodas and the smell of gasoline; she missed the jerky rumble of her truck's engine vibrating through the steering wheel; she missed stumbling down the stairs every morning to make eggs and toast for Charlie; she missed cringing at the taste of olives; she missed dreaming; she missed nightmares; she missed staying in bed till noon on Sunday's just because; she missed breathing and crying and the stinging warmth of hot chocolate on a cold day. She missed Jake's bear hugs and how he made her feel like she was special even in the stark moments of her mundane-ness. She missed Charlie's reluctant smiles and awkward fatherly advice. She missed Renee's randomly timed phone calls filled with intellectual discussions on the newest cast of 'The Real World' and Phil's most recent batting averages. She missed making mistakes and having them matter.

In a life that never ends, there is no rush and no motivation. Just another day.

And another.

And another.

****

**Ten Years**

She was going to Dartmouth. The irony of her life knew no bounds.

She was going to Dartmouth, and she had just turned thirty. Or eleven. Or nineteen. Depending on how you looked at it. The Cullen's had stopped celebrating birthdays long before they truly became a family, and had only celebrated Renesmee's up until her 7th.

But she still celebrated hers. Well, celebrated may be too strong of a word. She acknowledged it - took the day to be completely immersed in a world she was no longer apart of, wondering if somewhere in the world Charlie paused his TV for a minute to remember her; if Renee woke up in the morning thinking of a morning in a Washington hospital thirty years before; if Jake even remembered her face, let alone her birthday.

Somehow she knows they do.

And it matters.

Unlike the passing of a minute in her world, the minute that they take to look back fondly on the girl that disappeared from their lives more than a decade ago - that minute matters to them. They only have so many left.

And here she is, frozen in time, about to enter Dartmouth as a freshman with her daughter and husband. To the staring students, she is walking through the campus with her high-school sweetheart and his cousin.

Only one of the lies she tells in order to get through the day.

****

**One Hundred Years**

She hadn't seen a single soul in over fifty years.

She'd said goodbye to Edward and Renesmee seventy-three years ago, and hasn't seen them since.

She thinks that qualifies her as a bad mother, but Renesmee was never really raised. She knows that it qualifies her as a bad wife, but she never much cared about the sanctity of marriage in the first place.

Sometimes she feels guilty for leaving, but more often than not she feels guilty for not wanting to go back. She wishes that she loved them more, and hates that they understood. They were so understanding.

It was a Wednesday. Seventy-three years ago, Bella wanted to check in on her father for the first time since being transformed. He was fine. She was too. Until the phone rang.

That damn phone, always ringing at the most inopportune moments in order to deliver some horrible, life changing news. Maybe having so much animosity towards an inanimate object is abnormal, but then again her entire existence was abnormal.

So the phone rang, and then she ran with the quiet echo of Billy's broken voice in her mind. Jacob had never stopped phasing, but his body couldn't heal around the piece of car door in his gut. And for the first time in twenty-seven years, she felt alive.

And it hurt.

Her legs ached from running and she was choking to bring in unneeded gulps of air. Somehow she was crying.

Edward had found her sitting on that rotted log on First Beach, staring through the venom pooling in her eyes at the dying sun. Quite apt.

She was gone before he sat down.

Now almost a century later, she can tell her memories and sanity are slipping by the day.

Even for a vampire, living in solitude for too long eats at your mind. And she'd been alone for sixty-seven years.

Alone.

Though sometimes she hears howling and she imagines a horse-sized, russet colored wolf is on the other end.

Mostly she just feels alone.

****

**One Thousand Years**

Bella.

She still remembered that.

But she's not sure of much else. She's fairly certain that her eyes weren't always this deep red color. They might have been brown. Though sometimes she thinks they were blue.

She remembers that she used to try and remember. She doesn't do that anymore.

People are a blur. There were too many faces to make sense of any of them. She knew that she had a mother and a father, but only because that's how people are born. She barely remembers being born the second time. Rather, it feels like a memory of a memory of a dream. She knows that it hurt, not just in her veins but in her abdomen, and that when she woke up she was not alone, though she doesn't remember any differentiating features other than that one of them was scarred.

She doesn't remember much of how the world used to be, but she's fairly certain that it was cleaner and more populated. She's pretty sure that she used to hunt. She's also sure that vampires used to be legend, and the vague memory of that is attached to the smell of salt and sand and bitter wind.

She doesn't know how old she is, but she knows that she used to be young and that she's not anymore. She doesn't remember when she was young. Jane says she was weak. Bella doesn't really believe that they'd met before.

She doesn't know why she refuses to drink wolf blood. She tells Jane it's a habit. She tells herself it means something more. Jane asks why she doesn't drink human blood.

She doesn't have a good answer, so the ever present tingle in the back of her throat is finally sated.

All she knows for sure is that her name is Bella.

****

**Ten Thousand Years**

She's always thirsty.

The ever present feeling of burning knives in her throat is impossible to ignore, and she can think of nothing else. But in the snap of a finger the ache subsides, and she pulls back from the child's body. The only person she'd seen in seven years.

She lays on her back in contentment and is finally free to let her mind wander.

She finds that she had nothing to think about.

Her only memories are of being thirsty. She's not sure what to do now.

She hypothesizes that since she feels tired, she must be old. Therefore at one point she must have lived differently than this. It makes sense. She's not sure why nature would create a being that survives on blood if there is no blood to survive on.

There's one drop left on her lip. She doesn't remember drinking the rest, so she savors the taste as her tongue darts out.

****

**One Hundred Thousand Years**

No one understands her.

This new replenishment of humans know from their history lessons to stay far away from her dark eyes and pale, florescent skin. The few naive enough to ignore those warning signs are left unimpressed. She doesn't have any stories to tell about ancient civilizations, and even if she did she wouldn't be able to communicate them.

She's somehow remembered that she speaks English, but this knowledge is little help and leaves her frustrated and lonely.

Sometimes she wants to figure out a way to learn their language.

Eventually she figures that if she tries hard enough, they can learn hers instead.

She's glad when they do until she finds that she has nothing to say.

****

**One Million Years**

She likes to stay above ground. The stench circling the underground's never-ending hallways is overwhelming to her sensitive nose, and she much prefers the open starkness above.

The wind is as harsh and cold as the icy white terrain, but her marble skin doesn't seem to mind, and so she runs.

After three days, she comes upon the ocean.

Scientifically she knows that it's important that there used to be more than one, but her body and mind find the waves to be as unchanged as her. The never ending ebb and flow of the water mesmerises her, and she sits on the rocky sand for seven weeks.

Eventually she gets hungry and eats some fish.

She feels a warm hand pull her up from the undertow.

Breaking the surface, all she sees is the dark water and a dying sun.

****

**Ten Million Years**

She's running through the lush, dense forest chasing the sharp smell of wolf when the wind changes.

The smell is sweet, yet unappetizing and all too familiar.

She follows the trail and finds another like her.

The woman is like me, but she looks different. Her hair is honey blonde, and her face perfectly proportioned. Somehow we both remember the same words from a forgotten language and find that we both don't remember much, but know that we've done a lot. I tell her that I think I'm really old. She thinks the same of herself.

She says her name is Rose.

I tell her my name is Bell.

We chase the pack of wolves together.

****

**One Hundred Million Years**

We've been laying in this field for weeks, trying to remember when we saw each other last.

At some point she asks if I remember when we first met.

I tell her that it was when I saved her life in a battle.

She says that I have it backwards.

We both admit that we remember it both ways, and she goes on to wonder who we used to be.

I ask if she remembers anything important.

She says she doesn't, but likes to think the things she does unintentionally now, meant something then.

I ask what she means.

She says that she subconsciously tracks bears even though they don't taste the best.

I understand now. Wolves don't taste the best either. 

****

**One Billion Years**

Everything is quiet.

The heat of the lava sliding on the ground next to her hand is warm to the touch.

She wonders if she had always been this cold.

****

**Five Billion Years**

She doesn't know how long she's been staring at the sky, but figures it's been awhile.

The intensity of the sun is easily reflected into millions of tiny prisms on her bare skin, her whole being shining in the light of a dying sun, the heat radiating through her stone cold body. She's never been bothered by heat before, and is curious about the faint tingle of the sun's rays on her face.

Clarity reaches her in the last few seconds, and her mind has just enough time to process that she's reached the end.

She hears a warm voice tell her that it can't fight an eclipse.

She watches the moon disappear in the brightness.

She decides that she wants to smile. Instead she feels a tear fall down her cheek.

This makes her laugh.

Then she's finally warm again.


End file.
